woodman's team and the fox, sometimes with the tracks of the skaters still fresh upon it, and the holes cut for pickerel. Town committees inspect the bridges and causeways as if by mere eye-force to intercede with the ice and save the treasury. In the brooks the floating of small cakes of ice with various speed, is full of content and promise, and when the water gurgles under a natural bridge you may hear these hasty rafts hold conversation in an undertone. Every rill is a channel for the juices of the meadow. Last year's grasses and flower stalks have been steeped in rain and snow, and now the brooks flow with meadow tea, thoroughwort, mint, flag-root, and pennyroyal, all at one draught. In the ponds the sun makes encroachments around the edges first, as ice melts in a kettle on the fire, darting his rays through this crevice, and preparing the deep water to act simultaneously on the under side.
March 8, 1842. Most lecturers preface their discourses on music with a history of music, but as well introduce an essay on virtue with a history of virtue. As if the possible combinations of sound, the last wind that sighed or melody that waked the wood, had any history other than a perceptive ear might hear in the least and latest sound of nature. A history of music would be like the history of the future, for so
